The DGA hosted regular video calls among members during the COVID lockdown in early 2020. During that time we decided that getting together on a video call to discuss technology was a great way to keep in touch. In this video we have a deep-dive into Xaya, a fully decentralised blockchain gaming platform.
Xaya is an open-source platform for fully decentralized blockchain games. The platform is scalable to allow for thousands of concurrent players!
The Technology
Games such as Taurion run on top of the Xaya chain which is a modified version of Namecoin. This means that it is a Proof-of-Work chain that also uses merge mining. It is co-secured with Bitcoin and mined by one of the larger mining pools (F2Pool).
While the chain stores all player actions next to their registered names, the software is lightweight since it doesn’t verify the player actions. The game client is where all player actions are verified: each player verifies the actions of every other player.
Tech Stack (simplified)
Layers of the Xaya tech stack (left side of diagram is lower in the stack):
- At the baselayer is a Namecoin-like blockchain.
- The API layer interacts with the node software to pull data from the chain.
- The Game State Processor (GSP) is the layer that interprets the actions recorded on the chain to determine if they were valid moves.
- The top layer is the user interface which renders the graphics in accordance to what the GSP shows and handles the users’ interactions.
The Xaya team is currently working on advancing their architecture in such a way that players won’t have to run a full node, but can still play their games. Decentralisation is maintained for those who want it. This is important for mobile gaming as such devices won’t be able to run either the node or the GSP, but they could connect to a trusted third party.
YouTube Explainer
The team cover how their technology works, including Game State Processors (GSPs) and Game Channels (55:22). There are demos of two games: Taurion (an MMO RTS, 38:26) and Xaya Ships (battleships, 1:00:03).
The team wrote an in-depth explanation of their technology over on Medium.
Details of the architecture can also be found in the decentralized gaming book.
